


Late Night Contemplations

by annathecrow



Category: War for the Oaks - Emma Bull
Genre: 20 years later, Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annathecrow/pseuds/annathecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the first night in a new apartment, Eddi looks back on her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late Night Contemplations

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little ficlet where I tried to show an older Eddi and how I think her life went after the book ended. It isn't much, but this fandom doesn't have much fic here, so I thought I'd share.  
> I wish I was a better writer, I can't help but think that Eddi in her forties would be such an awesome person...

Eddi opened her eyes into the darkness. The ticking of the clock echoed in the unfamiliar space. A car sped by, the light entering through the bare window and splashing over the ceiling. Eddi closed her eyes again, trying to get her sleep back, but she soon realized it‘s a hopeless task. She gave up and slowly crept out of the bed, through the open sliding door of the bed nook. She stopped there for the moment, looking back on the sleeping figure on the bed. Phouka laid with arms spread over the pillows, comfortable and careless, snoring softly. Eddi‘s mouth tugged at the corners with a smile - he would deny that in the morning if she told him, like he did every time it came up in the last twenty years.

She stepped out into the room, carefully closing the sliding door behind her. It took her exactly one step to stub her toe on a cardboard box. She bit back a curse, wishing they‘d had enough energy to put the boxes out of the way when they hauled them up the four flights of stairs yesterday. _There are too many anyway_ , she mused as she made her way to the window. Their last flat was bigger, and they stayed long - there were too many things that they didn‘t have the heart to throw away. Here, it was obvious some of them will have to go. The whole flat was hardly two hundred square feet, and that was counting the little sleeping nook, cut of from the main space by a decorative wall covered with japanese paper, and just as tiny bathroom. Small kitchen counter stood next to the door, mercifully big enough to hold their massive coffee-maker. Other than that, the bed was the only piece of furniture in the apartment.

Eddi with a long step over her amp she finally reached the window. The solid grey wall across the narrow street held a striking similarity to another, from more than twenty years and half a lifetime ago. She squinted, trying to see for a moment the view out of her Minneapolis flat. But the light was all wrong, and the resemblance soon faded. Eddi rested her head on the cool glass, watching it fog with her breath. She felt light and untethered, looking back at the twenty years that passed. She had to admit, she never really thought that far into the future, back then. Especially not after the Faerie war. She won a fight against the Dark Queen, waged with music and magic; she found friends, and lovers, and lost some of them again. There is only so much one can take, she thought now, before they stop looking forward to the future and just take days as they come.

And the days came, and went. Some of them better; some of them worse. There was always music to play, and surprisingly often, faerie politics to deal with. And things came, and went. Eddi and the Fey was a memory of the faraway past now. The band broke up not long after the big concert at the First Avenue, the hole left after Willy too big and too deep to bridge over. Hedge disappeared one day without a word, his shiny new guitar equipment collecting dust in Eddi‘s livingroom for months before she had the heart to sell it. Carla and Dan took off to visit her parents, as far from Minneapolis as they could get. Eddi couldn‘t blame them, really - and if she felt a little wistful about it, nobody had to know.

Phouka did, of course. He read her like the weather, with eyes and ears and touches. And probably with his nose, too, as Eddi teased him when he changed his forms and pretended to be a silly pup who never listened to the commands of his mistress.

And he stayed. Eddi turned her eyes to the wall of the bedroom nook, trying to imagine the man sleeping behind it. At first, they didn‘t talk about it. They let the days fly by, content with the way their lives, and bodies, fit together. Savoring the closeness while being sure that, sooner or later, the other will grow tired of them and they will part their ways. Instead, they grew closer; from lovers to friends to partners, in all meanings of the word. It became their music, and their politics, and the silence started to fill with late night talks about the past, and then the future. It wasn‘t, hah!, a fairy tale - there were rough spots, and there was that summer when everything was breaking down, Eddi felt trapped and all she wanted was leave everything sumernatural behind and run as far as she could.

But I didn‘t, she thought as she looked through the window again. And here I am, looking out of a new place in the middle of the night, counting my years. She smirked. If there was something like too old for music, she surely was getting closer to it by the hour. But Carla summed it up very well once - Eddi didn‘t know how to do anything else. If nothing happens, she’ll be the crochety old curiosity on the stage, with her lipstick-red Rickenbacker - and probably a walker, too. She chuckled silently at the imagery.

There was a soft sound in the room behind her. She turned, not really startled, and smiled at the familiar figure of a wiry woman, a mop of dark hair and a small face with a long pointy nose.

„Go to bed lass, will ya? There‘s hardly space enough to put a leg down, without you getting under my feet.“ Hairy Meg folded her arms and frowned. “Got a small‘un this time, that ya did.“

Eddi smiled at her. „Sorry Meg. I am glad you chose to come.“

Meg flicked her hand derisively. „What‘d ya two do without me, huh? Burnt toast and black coffee, that‘s what. Shoo, shoo!“ She waved at Eddi, as if startling a flock of pidgeons, but she smiled when she did it. Eddi took the maze to the bedroom nook again and let the brownie to her work.

After she painstalkingly slowly crept back under the sheets, she turned to see Phouka grinning at her. She frowned and rested her forehead against his. „Do you ever sleep?“

He grinned even more and wrapped his arms around her, planting a kiss somewhere above her ear. „Devil never sleeps, my flower,“ he gave his usual reply and Eddi chuckled. „Oh, you do. And you snore.“

„I do not!“ was the indignant reply, but it was already muffled by sleep. Eddi smiled, settled into the embrace and closed her eyes. There was life waiting for her in the morning - but there will be strong coffee, fresh bread and snark to help her over it.


End file.
